I think you're referring to an old node of mine: Re: How to do regex backreferences within $variable replacement text?. When I used that solution at work, another perl programmer told me I was "too advanced." I don't think that this was very advanced - just a novel way of looking at the problem.
Anyway, that entire thread may be relevant here.
In reply to Re^2: s/// in a sub : passing expressions
by Tanktalus
in thread s/// in a sub : passing expressions
by ady
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